Some Kind of Fool
by antepathy
Summary: IDW PreWar Wing/Drift.


R/M  
IDW  
Drift, Wing (under my stupid headcanon name Strikewing), OCs  
Warnings for sticky prostitution sex.  
For **5_prompts** table 61  
Bleeders are my own stupid headcanony stupid villain types (did I mention they were stupid?) I came up with for Coriolis. They basically harvest the energon of living mechs and resell it as a very fancy, high priced beverage. Angels of Prima, another stupid headcanon thing. So, yeah.

1. Some Kind of Unknowing Fool  
Drift watched from slitted optics as the pair of strangers made their way down the filthy corridor. Too clean, for one thing; one such a bright white he seemed almost to glow in the rancid darkness. Both were airframes, unheard of in the gutters, the other larger, and blue as shadow. Drift figured any starving jets could at least fly to the open sky he'd only rarely seen, one last desperate break for freedom, seeking the air when the ground had been so brutal. It stirred a strange envy in him that they could at least escape, if only to die.

These two, though, didn't look in danger of starving. Drift couldn't figure out their game. They didn't look like bleeders, either. Stupid to even think that. The bleeders Drift remembered from last night kept themselves ruthlessly average: bland colors, unremarkable mods.

Drift shifted against a patch of wall he'd claimed for himself. There was a downdraft here, faint and stale, but the air stirred, cooling the load on his systems. He rubbed his arm as they approached, sore in more ways than one from his last encounter with the bleeders.

"….not interested," he said, shortly, cutting off the blue one's speech just as he opened his mouth.

"In anything?" the white one asked.

"Anything." Drift frowned. "And I don't have anything, so…," he waved one hand away, "not worth your time."

The blue jet smiled. "And who decides that? You rate our time as so precious…but not your own?"

Drift grunted.

"How do you spend your time?" the white one asked, his voice quiet, almost shy.

Drift rounded his glare on the jet. "Trying to stay alive."

The white one dropped to one knee, holding out a packet. Drift gave it a hostile gaze, not moving.

"It's for you," the jet said.

"Me," Drift said, coldly meeting the gold optics with his lowlight red. "You don't know me."

"Is that a reason not to give you something?" They seemed undaunted. Or stupid.

"No one gives anyone anything down here. Not for free."

The larger jet smirked. "Is that all? We can make you pay."

Drift growled, pushing to his feet, defiant. "Figured that's how it was." He knew he was right. Nothing was free. In a way, it made the jets seem less alien now: they were just like everyone else. "Told you," he said. "Don't have anything."

"You have your word, perhaps?"

Drift snorted. "Not worth much."

"Is it not?" The white one, again, questioning. "It seems to me that honor is a valuable thing. And no one can cheapen your word but yourself."

Drift glared, nettled. "Who are you?"

"Strikewing," the white jet said, and then gestured over his shoulder with his chin. "And that is Cloudburst."

"You don't belong here," Drift said.

"Do you?"

"I know how to survive here." You don't, he thought.

"There's more to life than surviving." The white one, Strikewing, gave a hinting tilt of his helm, asking for a name.

Drift looked away. "Drift."

Strikewing held the packet out again. "Please take it, Drift? We'd really like you to have it."

He felt his mouth twitch. "No lecture."

"No lecture," Strikewing agreed, solemnly. "Simply this." He lifted the packet. "It has our comm code, and if you ever need anything—anything—you'll use it."

Drift snorted, but reached to take the packet, keeping his battered fingers away from the shiny, undented black of the jet's. "Right."

"Promise," Strikewing said, not releasing the packet.

Drift rolled his optics, wanting to just pull away, leave the whole thing as stupid. But he could feel the squish of an energon ration under the wrapping, and his tank ached, hollow. "Fine. I promise." Easy enough. He never needed anything.

A tilt of the head, awaiting more.

Frag, they were insistent. "If I ever need anything I'll comm," he said, in the flat voice of a catechism. He could take care of himself. And a promise he never intended to act upon was, he figured, a quite different thing than a broken one.

A smile burst through Strikewing's earnest expression, like the sun Drift had only heard of, and the hand released the packet into his, squeezing his knuckles for the briefest of instants.

Fools, Drift thought, the packet heavy in his hand, like wealth, like possession, his face edging into a clouded sneer. Unknowing, blind fools.

2. It's the wrong kind of place to be thinking of you.

His mouth pressed against the wetware's, passionless and hard. Even as the mech writhed against him, some calculated parody of desire.

The last of the packet's energon ran through his systems, after nearly getting ill on its potent richness. The rest of the packet's contents he'd bartered away: cleansing rags, lengths of wire, half the roll of patch tape, three little vials of touch up paint. Vanity, ridiculous things to give a starving mech, some fantastic imagining of what a gutters mech's priorities might be. But the most ludicrous had been the coupon to a washrack mid-level.

Which had at least gotten him this: the other mech twining his arms around Deadlock's, spreading his thighs, offering his battered valve. Drift grunted, thrusting his hips closer, shoving the other against the wall.

But he didn't want this, he realized. Not this way. It felt hollow, mechanical, and he kept thinking he should feel something beyond the electrical charge. Something, anything real.

And he thought of the two jets, suddenly, the white one especially. Strikewing. Even the name sounded beautiful, fierce, stirring something, like a cobweb of a long dead emotion. Clean and elegant, and that haunting smile. He even smelled different, like freedom, and open air. Pure and beautiful, he thought, even has he pistoned his hips against the green mech, who clutched the coupon tightly, as though reminding himself of why he endured.

It was sickening, filthy, when the overload hit. Something neither desired, grimy and passionless. And the release left him feeling depleted, somehow lesser than before.

3. If I choose now

Drift was running, feet pounding on metal, thigh pistons at the top edges of their performance tolerances. They were after him. Again. The bleeders remembered him from before: pointing him out through the crowd of mechs at the A-85 newboard.

"Feisty," the spotter had said, pointing, as though that was a codename. Drift had tried to keep the crowd between them but the beaters were too good, circling around him until he'd had no choice but to bolt.

Not again, not again. The phrase pummeled through his sensor net: a tempo of desperation.

A striker zipped in close, a shockstick crackling, swiping at the back of Drift's thights. Drift whirled, a backhand fast connecting with the mech's face. A satisfying, sickening crunch muffling a howl of pain, and Drift had broken free, spinning down the side corridor.

Temporary victory, at best, his cotex whitecoding with panic as he heard the heavy strides of the beaters behind him, echoing loud like omens. It was a matter of time before they had him again, before he was pinned, braced on his back, arm vised out as the leech knelt on his shoulder and wrist.

He could already feel it, could already see the leech's bland concentration as he tested the sample, measuring Drift's blood energon, setting a price to his pain.

Drift shoved the thought from his mind, skidding recklessly around a corner. His thigh servos were screaming, worn through their lubricating grease, heating with each stride. He'd slow, soon, forced by mechanical failure, and they'd get him, weak. Weak.

He hated this.

He burst blind around the next corner, head bulled down, full charge, concentrating only on getting one more step, then another, between him and the beaters.

And crashed, headlong, into a chassis. He tumbled to the ground in a flail of limbs. He sprawled, systems alarming with heat and strain, sucking in the coolness of the floor, until a hard hand dug under the rim of his collar armor, hauling him up to his knees.  
And he was brought back: Security.

Drift didn't even have the energy to curse his bad luck.

"Problems?" The face settled into the all-too-familiar sneer.

"Yeah," a voice behind Drift blurted, footsteps slowing. One of the beaters, still venting loud. "He assaulted my friend and ran." He pointed down the corridor at the striker, who was staggering up behind, shockstick nowhere in sight, face dripping with energon.

The Security mech turned to Drift, face expectant and closed.

Drift shook his head. It wouldn't do any good; they wouldn't believe him. The bleeders all had registered identities—probably fake—registries, addresses, batches, histories, legitimate jobs. Drift wa a nobody, in all senses. He was the least of the system.  
There was no choice: he lost either way.

4. Waking from a tormented sleep.

It was the silence that did it, trawling him awake. It was never silent in the gutters. There was always some clanging or thumping, some muffled mechanical sound, dripping liquid, the hiss of steam, the whole place under pressure.

Jail. He was in jail, again. He could feel it press against him. Six surfaces—walls, floor, ceiling—a cube waiting to crush him or fold inward like a tesseract. Trapped.

It was all they had in the gutters, the only freedom: to move. It was hopeless, in any real way: they'd all given up long ago the idea that they could find a place: safer, better, where they could claim they belonged. But they clung with desperate fingers to the principle of motion, as though movement was life.

There was no movement here, the air almost too thin to carry sound.

Drift pushed off the narrow berth, just to move, just to make noise, the thunk of his own footplates against the floor almost reassuring. He paced: three steps, wall. He turned. Three steps, wall. He braced his hands against the flat planes, as though to reassure himself that they weren't pressing in. He still ached from the beating: guttermechs did not fare well here—but it was the confinement, the thin air that seemed to want to pull him apart and crush him simultaneously that choked at him, fraying his composure.

The code. He remembered the code—he'd thrust it in his ankle storage, during the tear down of the packet, as something, another scrap he had yet to find a use for. But everything had a value, no matter how small. It just took some time to find it. No one threw anything away in the gutters: they were all trash and did not discriminate.

He held the crinkled flimsy for a long moment, before giving a wry snort, entering the code almost with a sardonic defiance.

A long, stretching pause, silence filled with the fuzz of comm static. "Angels of Prima." A voice, unfamiliar, cool.

"Strikewing," Drift blurted. He'd not thought about it, hadn't put the pieces together. Charity. Charity organization. "I want to talk to Strikewing."

"He's not here."

Drift growled, roiling with disappointment. "Anything. He said if I needed anything…. He made me promise."

A pause. "And you need to talk to him."

"Yes." Though he found himself praying the mech didn't ask why. He had no answer, nothing that wasn't pathetic.

"Hold." A dense silence. Drift frowned, highlighting the disconnect command but not executing it. Yet. Because even this was better than the silence of the cell. Even wondering or regretting or being confused was better than being confined to his own narrow cortex, this cramped space.

"Strikewing." The voice was his, immediately recognizable: soft and earnest.

"You said to comm if I needed anything." He frowned. Strikewing probably didn't remember. This was idiotic. "The gutters. Decacycle ago."

"Drift. Yes. I remember." There was something in the timbre of the voice that sent an almost pleasurable shiver through Drift's sensornet. "What do you need?"

He froze. What did he need? Nothing. Everything. Freedom. "Just to talk."

"Talk." A pause. "Drift. Are you in trouble?"

Drift couldn't stop the bitter snort. "Jail."

The line went dead.

5. Gate

Headlamps, on high, dazzled his vision—the jail guard, Steelspan, sweeping the cell, finding Drift crammed into the corner. "Come on," Steelspan said, already impatient. "Visitor."

Visitor. Drift followed the purple backframe, his manacled hands slowing his steps. Who would want to visit him?

…Strikewing. The white jet rose from the perch on a bench, and flung his arms around Drift. The same wash of scent: clean, almost sweet, and the arms were tight around him, so different from the slack, loose embrace of the wetware. Drift stood, clumsy, embarrassed by the thought and too aware of the heavy manacles between them, his fingertips brushing a silver-white thigh.

"Drift," Strikewing said, his voice like a breeze, a sound of freedom, "are you well?"

Drift grunted, but didn't move, didn't pull away. He let himself memorize, as much as he could, this experience, this feeling. He knew the value of the rare, of kindness, if nothing else.

Strikewing pulled back, resting his arms on Drift's shoulders, optics scouring Drift's face, catching over the fresh dents and scrapes on the dark armor. "Tell me."

"Assault," Steelspan cut in. "An evasion of civilian arrest."

That's how they'd spin it, Drift thought, sourly, shaking his head. He almost wished he was surprised. Instead he was just…tired.  
Strikewing's frown hardened, looking over Drift's shoulder at Steelspan. "I would like to hear it from Drift."

Steelspan shrugged. "He's going to say he's innocent. They all do. Waste of time."

"It is mine to waste," Strikewing said, straightening, almost imperceptibly, a sort of haughty tension in his posture. He turned back to Drift. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Please." Strikewing's optics softened. "You said you wanted to talk. Please."

"Part of a bleeder crew. The striker."

"Did you tell them?"

"Bleeders," Steelspan snorted. "More like he was on Syk and delusional."

Drift shrugged one shoulder, toward Steelspan. No point saying anything. They'd already figured out their story.

Strikewing gave a sad, solemn nod. "I believe you, Drift." His hands dropped from the spaulders, one thumb brushing against a bruised fuel line, the rough patch tape that he doubtless recognized. "A fine then, yes?"

"If he's found guilty."

"When," Strikewing corrected. Drift's gaze snapped up: In that one word, the idea that Strikewing was some hopeless, naïve, fool, fell away. The gold optics glinted back at Drift, almost merrily, as though in on the joke.

A shrug. "He hit a registered mech," Steelspan said. "The only files he has are SecRec."

"A fine," Strikewing repeated."

"Yeah. Or jail time."

"I will pay the surety."

Steelspan grunted, turning to the console, muttering something about waste.

Waste. Right. Drift's head whipped back, angry. "Not why I wanted to talk!"

"I know." The fingers slid down his forearms in little, soothing strokes, until they came to the heavy manacles. "I can't abide this, though."

"Been through worse." But he didn't pull away.

Steelspan crossed over, holding out a datapad. Strikewing took it, negligently, tapping out a code. Drift grumbled.

"Drift. It is the Angels' fund. This is what it's here for."

"Don't need charity."

"No, you don't. But I'd like to do it, nonetheless."

Drift glared, optics red and hard before tossing his head. "Your money."

That soft smile Drift remembered from the gutters, turning it into a gentle joke between them. "Mine to waste, as well."

Steelspan pushed between them, reaching for the manacles' control socket. The clasps around Drift's wrists dropped away. Drift couldn't restrain the sigh of something like relief, feeling his hands move again.

"Come," Strikewing said, cupping Drift's elbow, and for a moment Drift couldn't move, the touch gentle and intimate. But he moved, at last, footsteps awkward and leaden, following the silver wedge of the wingpanels, through the building, and out into the gold wash of a sunlit day. The doors gleamed behind him, catching the light in elegant scrolls of gold and bronze.

Sunrise? Sunset? He had no idea—the words made no sense in the gutters. So for a moment he just stood there, dazzled, the open space of the plaza almost making him dizzy.

"Drift?" Strikewing turned, optics tilted with worry, one hand reaching as if to stabilize Drift. "Are you well?"

Drift wavered, then reached forward, his arms rising, wrapping around the jet, pulling him into an awkward, wanting embrace.  
The jet melted against him, tipping his face into Drift's shoulder, his own arms coming around Drift's waist. Drift felt the mouthplates against his shoulder stretch into a smile, and Strikewing's voice, soft and promising. "You're welcome."


End file.
